It is of course true that a great deal of trash which passes as literature, or at least as entertaining reading, also articulates social myths with great clarity. I read many of the novels of Horatio Alger at an early age, and as I have a good verbal memory, a journey round my skull would unearth a great many pages of some of the most pedestrian prose on record.
I wish very much that a surgical operation could remove it and substitute something better, but still Alger probably did me no permanent damage, as I was never inspired to adopt the virtues of his heroes, and this leads me to hope that the children of today may emerge similarly unscathed from their similar experiences.
The greatest crime is not profanity per se (see Christian Bale below) but it is the unimaginative use of any word.
I much prefer profanity than the intention degradation that occurs in franchising in terms such as “sharing”, “family” and “owning a business”. Orwell said that degrading language is the only way to make totalitarianism permanent and unshakable.
Obscenity in language is an ornament except when it becomes routine, & in the latter event it approaches mere idiocy. The most horrid example of passivity & inertia of mind I know is Woodside’s story of the soldier who gazed into a shell hole at the bottom of which a dead mule was lying, and said: “Well, that fuckin’ fucker’s fucked.”
(What sort of person is it, incidentally, whose feelings would be spared by printing the above as “that ____in’ _____er’s ____ed,” or “that obscene obscenity’s obscenitied”?) (Collected Works, 8, 10)
Tyranny is seldom (in the long run, never) imposed on people from without; it is a projection of their own pusillanimity (defintion: cowardice). Tyranny and mob rule are the same thing.
Any law exists because those most able to compete for it goes to the political process and wins.
This is how the Ontario franchsie law went in 2000. I was there.
Everyone’s interests were served very well, except the powerless: mom-and-pop franchise investors.
Sure a few attorneys were made multi-millionaires (continue to blackball, block and betray sincere advocates), the franchise bar has reached record numbers (God love those disclosure document revisions!) while the 2nd-worst-chumps, the false protagonists (the franchisors) got a short-term sales bump but their reputation continues to nose dive.
On any legitimate public policy level, the Arthur Wishart Act is a complete and total failure.
But as a way to launder mom-and-pop life savings via dim-witted franchisors?
1. People think the most fearful people in franchising are franchisees.
They are wrong.
Franchisees certainly have difficulties but theirs are simpler and easier to deal with.
2. People then would believe that franchisors are pretty heavily weighted down with shame.
Yes. They have their share but not the majority.
3. The franchise lawyers are the locus of the majority of all shame-humiliation. They are crippled by it. The greatest fear I have ever seen is in the eyes of attorneys that I know. Some so great they are speechless when I see them.
Their role is to be Champions of Tyranny as Northrop Frye pointed out in his analysis of Blake.
Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth.
Franchisees and franchisors talk as if they are from another planet.
Language is one very important element of culture. Franchisees and franchisors have a much, much different worldview or culture.
I know this because after 10 years, viewed in a cultural or race sense, I should be defending franchisors not franchisees.
That the industry elite perceives me to be a Traitor to my own Class is why I cause some unease, over and above my willingness to share information.
I speak Franchisingfluently, recognize that there are 2 founding languages that are totally intertwined and interdependent.
To reasonable participants on both “sides”, I am a credible translator and proven bilingual witness.
Outsiders must be quite confused when they survey the almost total of understanding from one side to another. In fact, they’re both alike in one key aspect:
Franchisees do not understand franchisors (lack life skills that are trainable) and
franchisors do not understand franchisees (no need to bother, until recently).
In this 37 second clip from the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke demonstrates, the urgency of understanding both sides usually falls to the party in chains.
Every society whether ordered on merit, race or class, always (and I repeat, always) has an intellectual class: their teachers, scribes, writers, clerics.
Franchisors have the franchise bar.
Franchisees haven’t had anyone (until recently).
Therefore what we should be working toward is:
a sustainable economic model for the development and maintenance of an independent, international franchisee-oriented intellectual capability.
Note: The word “intellectual” should not be considered a “put down” and is not intended that way at all. Any serious students of history know, however, that there are leaders and followers; early adopters all the way through to laggards, etc. But everyone must do their part, in their own sets of skills.
To me, franchisees must try to re-kindle their imaginations: What they really believe in.
And then they may start to gather together into small groups.
The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in. Northrop Frye
The first casualty in franchising is your ability to problem solve because your imagination is being intentionally short-circuited.
The surest sign of a nazi is their lack of humour and joy in other people’s happiness.
Their abilities to suspend judgment and engage in play is dead.
The road back is through music, poetry, especially when shared with others.
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. Howard Thurman
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Albert Einstein
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive. Henry David Thoreau
Imagination rules the world. Napoleon Bonaparte
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact. ~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night’s Dream
The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in. Northrop Frye
From The Developing Imagination [this post]:
Posted by Les Stewart 
Franchisees and franchisors talk as if they are from another planet.
FranchiseFool.com 